There is a chart of page 47 of the report that breaks down the disappearing positive samples by sport. More than 20 of these cases are referred to as 'skating' but it doesn't identify what that means in terms of speed skating, short track speed skating, and figure skating.

Evgeny Plushenko has come out and said he's never taken drugs, and I tend to believe him. There is little value in skaters taking drugs, with the possible exception of Pairs. Over the years, few skaters have been nailed for drugs, and those that have, generally have taken them by accident, like cold medication.

That is hard to say. Individual athletes are not identified in the report because the focus was on the system and the short time frame that was given to complete this report given the Rio games are coming up in less than 3 weeks. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward and whether the names of the athletes involved are eventually identified. The IOC is deciding today whether to ban Russia from the Rio Olympics and then once that decision is made then the decisions will move to the various sporting federations to decide what to do next. If the Russian skating federation is found to be involved then the Russians could be banned from competing like the Russian track and field athletes are banned but we probably won't know for some time to come. I hope that once the decision about Rio is made that WADA and the IOC allow the investigators to continue with the work they started in this report to get all the details of which athletes and in which sports have been involved in this doping program.

Any individual athletes who are found to have cheated should have their results negated and their medals, if any, revoked. That applies whether they are Russian or American or Icelandic or whatever.

I think it would be unfair to ban all Russian athletes from Rio because there was systematic, state-sponsored switching of samples at Sochi, as WADA alleges. I'm not sure why they are so fixated on Rio when it seems that the problems occurred at Sochi and perhaps London. They should be talking about identifying the guilty at Sochi and disqualifying the guilty.

Many of the Rio athletes didn't compete in London and should not be punished for a crime they had nothing to do with.

Just to respond to the question that Virginia posed about the focus on Rio. One of the reason's that there has been a big focus on that is that this program was running, I believe, until last summer and it covered up positive tests for Russian athletes competing at competitions both domestic and international in Russia. So athletes that tested positive during routine testing in Russia had those tests flagged and not reported to WADA as is required and that would mean that athletes included with the Russian Olympic team could be competing at the Olympics when they really should be serving a doping ban. It's not fair to other athletes who are competing according to the rules if they lose to athletes who have cheated and lose the opportunity to win a medal and receive it during the games.

It's going to be interesting moving forward to see what happens with Russian skaters and whether the ISU takes any steps to punish Russia but I think more information is still needed about whether the individual sporting federations within Russia were complicit and or aware of this program.

Dragonlady wrote:Evgeny Plushenko has come out and said he's never taken drugs, and I tend to believe him. There is little value in skaters taking drugs, with the possible exception of Pairs. Over the years, few skaters have been nailed for drugs, and those that have, generally have taken them by accident, like cold medication.

It's funny, when I first heard about the systemic doping problems in Russia, Plushenko was the first athlete I thought about. Of course, it could be that he was taking drugs that have SINCE been banned—meldonium, the drug that Maria Sharapova has been suspended over, is the one that sprang to mind. It helps to reduce recovery time, and that would be immensely helpful to athlete who has logged the number of hours that Plushenko has. Of course, it only became banned in January of this year, so whether taking it for Sochi was cheating or not is a grey area.

Regardless, the whole thing is just so sad. Every Russian athlete is tainted by this news, whether they cheated or not in reality. And the facts say that many, many of them did, and it sometimes was out of their control, which is devastating. It's also devastating for all of the athletes who were denied a placement by a doped-up athlete. Calls the whole Olympic movement into question. I, for one, will not be as interested in Rio because I just can't believe that the athletes are clean. I hope they get it figured out by the time the next Olympics come but I'm not hopeful.

bumphystars wrote:Regardless, the whole thing is just so sad. Every Russian athlete is tainted by this news, whether they cheated or not in reality. And the facts say that many, many of them did, and it sometimes was out of their control, which is devastating. It's also devastating for all of the athletes who were denied a placement by a doped-up athlete. Calls the whole Olympic movement into question. I, for one, will not be as interested in Rio because I just can't believe that the athletes are clean. I hope they get it figured out by the time the next Olympics come but I'm not hopeful.

If you have impression that Russian athletes cheat with doping and the others are all clean - please look at the statistics.

The # of Olympic medals taken away from the athletes for doping violations after 1990:

Two observations on this. 1) Fact that ATHLETES from other countries cheated, does not make the question any better2) Here there is talk of a state program, not of individual athletes cheating. And that is unique, to the best of my knowledge, since the DDR in the 80es and China in the very same period.

On a side note: Romania, Andreea Raducan. Ephedrine in her nose... dura lex, sed lex. The same substance for which Elena Berezhnaya was revoked her title and banned in 1999.

Andy wrote:Two observations on this. 1) Fact that ATHLETES from other countries cheated, does not make the question any better2) Here there is talk of a state program, not of individual athletes cheating. And that is unique, to the best of my knowledge, since the DDR in the 80es and China in the very same period.

Individual athlete Yelena Isinbaeva 2-times Olympic champion in pole vault. Never ever caught on taking doping. Recently showed seasons best result at Russian nationals. She is not allowed to participate in OG 2016 only because she is Russian.

Ellen, You should be mad at your country's doping control organization and the sports organization that oversees it for covering up the doping practices of the athletes that were involved. It is because those organizations can't be trusted to do what they were required to do that all the athletes were banned from Rio.

chuckiem wrote:Ellen, You should be mad at your country's doping control organization and the sports organization that oversees it for covering up the doping practices of the athletes that were involved. It is because those organizations can't be trusted to do what they were required to do that all the athletes were banned from Rio.

No.You probably have not much information on this subject. I also do not know much but here is what I know for sure.

1. My country's doping control organization named RUSADA had been deprived the accreditation and was closed by WADA a year ago. Attention: since then all doping tests of all Russian athletes had been taken by foreign doping organizations based in the UK or Switzerland or somewhere else outside of Russia. The Russian Olympic team consists of the clean athletes who PASSED all those tests over the past year.

2. Russian sports authorities opened criminal case against the former head of RUSADA for the cheating with the doping tests. That person escaped to the US from the Russian justice. He then gave interview to the NY Times where he told about the facts of cheating in RUSADA (that he did himself). The WADA report is based solely on the testimony of one person who is the criminal but whom they trust. No one came to Russia to gather any justifications for the facts named in the report.

3. Several days prior the WADA report was published the US doping agency asked for banning Russians from Rio - that's the real attempt to put pressure on CAS and IOC.

4. Most sports Federations have no claims to the Russian athletes in regards to doping. Such big federations as volleybal, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling already openly spoke against banning Russian athletes from Rio.

Observing all the facts and considering the timings when the WADA report is published (in less than a month before the Olympics) it is clear that the actions towards Russian athletes are so unfair and look disgusting.

I don't think you can say that the action of the international sporting organizations has been unfair to Russian athletes. They have been trying to enforce the rules of international sport in spite of the efforts of Russian sports authorities to circumvent them. Russian sports officials have definitely done Russian athletes a disservice because it is very difficult right now to have that presumption of innocence for Russian athletes that they should have. Most Russian athletes are not doping but all the athletes that were tested in the Russian system up until last summer benefited from the system of doping whether they themselves were guilty of doping themselves. Athletes that were doping regularly were protected from sanctions but so to were athletes that doped by accident and the risk of making this mistake was removed from all Russian athletes when they were tested domestically because the positive tests weren't being passed on to WADA.

All that being said, I don't want to see a blanket ban on Russian athletes at the Olympics. I think a sport by sport ban would be more appropriate based on the evidence produced so far indicating which sports were affected by the doping program. There's no evidence that the Gymnastics team or the Tennis players have been involved in doping and so they should be able to compete and I think this is ultimately what will happen though they may not be able to compete under the auspices of the Russian flag or uniform. It certainly is unfortunate that innocent Russian athletes are being caught up in this but Russian sports officials and athletes have been cheating innocent athletes from around the world for the past few years, so this has really been a lose-lose for all involved.

This article outlines the timeline for the current scandal in Russian Sport - important to note that Russia is not alone in this issue as Kenya also faces some serious issues. The Russian doping scandal begins just 18 months ago with a television report on German television. That show led to the investigation that led to the IAAF ban of Russia from the Olympics. The new report that documents the state doping program for a wide range of sports only happened in May and so yes there is a very short time period before the Rio Olympics. I would like to modify a previous statement where I said it was not the international sporting agencies that were at fault. The IOC should have been more aggressive in coordinating with WADA to investigate the doping allegations right from the beginning and then the report delivered in Nov. 2015 could have been more comprehensive and included sports outside of athletics. If that had happened then it's likely that this information would have been available to the IOC six months ago and would have had time to make a proper decision in this case instead of making the decision with less than 2 weeks till the games begin.

Anyway, WADA report has only allegations against few Russian sports authorities based solely on words of a person or maybe three persons who themselves were involved in doping machinations and then left Russia.It is not only unfair but illegal towards hundreds of innocent athletes to carry out decision that would ruin their lives without the proper investigation, having no proof, no evidence. Clear that it is political case which severely violates the Olympic Charter.

The suggestion to let Russian athletes participate not under Russian flag looks so political and has only intention to humiliate the athletes and the country.

The WADA report contains a lot more than just the word of 3 people involved in the doping scheme. They have evidence obtained through testing of the urine samples from the Sochi Olympics showing that the salt content of some samples that would normally indicate a serious health concern and not normally found in Olympic caliber athletes. They have the sample containers which when examined under microscope reveal small scratches on the sides leading under the supposedly tamper proof seal and have recreated those scratches demonstrating how the seals were removed and replaced. DNA tests were completed on samples from the Sochi Olympics and the samples were found not to match the DNA profile of the athletes from which they were supposed to have come from. They have e-mail communication between Russian sports officials and laboratory officials discussing the positive tests and communicating what steps the laboratory was to take to conceal the test result. Every positive test was immediately communicated to sports officials because the laboratory didn't know who the sample belonged to so that the sports officials would then advise the laboratory whether the sample belonged to a Russian athlete or to a foreign athlete. The report lays out that in every case but one the foreign athletes were then treated appropriately whereas the Russian athletes had their positive tests covered up by falsifying the reports. There is an argument that Russian athletes are being treated unfairly by having broad bans against them when they have done nothing wrong but to claim that there is no evidence of the allegations in the report is false.